G-Process Factory Visit

Kimura San! He gave us some history about his factory, his process, and he taught us about glasswork. Also, dude spoke English! I had no idea :D

Yesterday we visited G-Process, a local Machikoba, or small inner-city factory. G-Process is a small factory located in the Love Hotel capital of Tokyo, Uguisudani. If you can see the Sky Tree, you know you’re in the East side, the old side, the factory side of Tokyo. G-Process if a part of a larger company called Sanki, which has other factory locations in the city.

At G-Process they do laser cutting, 3d-beveling, glasswork and laser etching- mostly. The owner, Kimura San, is a little different than most factory owners in Tokyo. Although his business is 95% production of industrial goods and machine parts, he will take on small orders for custom made designs, which make up the remaining 5% of production. This is great news for young designers and fashion students! He is very supportive and is willing to work with you to try to keep the cost down for you. His company has been in business for over 60 years, and he has seen the industry change quite a bit. Although there are still thousands of small factories like this in Tokyo now, there used to be even more. After the war these factories popped up everywhere because there just wasn’t any space in Tokyo for larger factories like there are in the countryside all over Japan.

We started the tour with a demonstration of the 3D-beveling machine, that does reliefs in any material. You just jam the data into the computer and bzz bzz zbzzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbz for fifteen minutes and you can have any shape you want! This machine also does laser cutting on soft materials like leather and textiles.

We then moved down to the big daddy cutter. This machine cuts metal and wood of any size or thickness. Remember：The more cuts, the higher the cost.

After the tour and demo, we headed upstairs for a glass making workshop. Kimura san has prepared this workshop at the request of the city, for high school students who come into the city from the countryside.

He usually selects some colors and patterns for his middle and high school students, but Bunka students aren’t children, so he allowed us to have free reign on his glass supply! It still took a long time to decide what to use…too many colors and textures!

Josiah and his textured glass.

Bernice was super excited about making a dish for her chili sauce ^^

Cool custom made rulers made for glass cutting.

The glass is in the kiln right now! Can’t wait to see how it turns out! Thank you so much Kimura san!